Fall 2012 - Food

  

Students selected for this discussion were cordially invited to dinner on

Sunday, November 18th, 2012 at 7:30 PM

which featured a specially prepared menu and casual conversation with: 

Emily Conner – Instructor, UA Department of English & Organic Farming

Nilam Dave – Instructor, UA Department of Hospitality Management & Human Nutrition

Andrew Grace – Director, Eating Alabama

Tres Jackson – Executive Chef, Epiphany Cafe

Brandi McKinney – Human Resources Director, Alabama Credit Union/Secret Meals

Jean Mills – Southern Sustainable Ag Working Group

Alvin Niuh – Assistant Professor, UA Department of Hospitality Management & Human Nutrition

David Snow – Snow’s Bend Farm

Lindsay Turner – Executive Director, Druid City Garden Project

                                    

                                        To check out the blog discussion for this topic, continue reading below.
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1. Dinner With Strangers says:

   November 3, 2012 at 3:22 PM

   Welcome! Those of us at the Ferguson Center are excited to finally open up discussion for Dinner with Strangers! This page will be a space for the community members and selected students involved with this project to begin discussing the culture of food in Tuscaloosa, before meeting for dinner on November 18th.

   Let’s start the conversation with a quote from Michael Pollan: “Don’t you find it odd that people will put more work into choosing their mechanic or house contractor than they will into choosing the person who grows their food?”

   How do you respond to this? What do you know about where your food comes from in Tuscaloosa? What role do you play in that process? What concerns/questions do you have about food culture in the area?
   • DWS Jenna Reynolds says:

     November 9, 2012 at 2:48 AM

     I was never very concerned about where my food came from until I came to college, and endeavored to make more educated decisions on what exactly I was putting in my body. I don’t know much about locally grown food here in Tuscaloosa, but I try to make organic choices and read food labels as much as possible. I sometimes go to the farmer’s market, but for the most part I got involved with this program to learn more about local food. I would love to know more about local produce and agriculture businesses and how their products might become easily available. I think it is a personal responsibility to become conscious of what we are putting in our bodies.
     • DWS Katie Steck says:

       November 18, 2012 at 9:03 PM

       I agree with you Jenna. I am not very educated on the produce that we are available to here in Tuscaloosa. It is hard for a busy college student to try and find the very best choices to put in their bodies. At home when, I love going to the farmers market and seeing what New Orleans and the surrounding areas have to offer. I am also more prone to ordering something on a menu that says where locally it is from. I am very excited to see what Tuscaloosa has to offer.
2. DWS Christina Kozuh says:

   November 4, 2012 at 7:49 PM

   I think this statement is very true. People have turned lazy when it comes to food. They just want good food in front of them when they’re hungry. I don’t know a thing about where food comes from in Tuscaloosa. I guess I don’t play a role at all because I don’t have a clue where it comes from. I feel like that is how most people/ students are unless they are educated about it. Where does the food come from? Do we have a lot of locally grown products? What is the most common? Where is the best place to buy local food , anywhere besides the farmer’s market?
3. DWS Caroline Taylor says:

   November 6, 2012 at 1:36 AM

   No, I don’t know where my food comes from, unless it’s stated on a sign above the apples at Publix or beside the entrée description at Ephinany Café. It’s embarrassing. I think it has a lot to do with the way food is advertised today. Manufactures only advertise as much as they are required to about what plant the foods are processed in, or what pesticides are sprayed on our fruits and vegetables, or how genetically modified our foods are because they know that customers wouldn’t buy their product if they knew exactly where and how the food was grown/processed. On the other hand, people aren’t ashamed to advertise foods that are truly organic, homegrown, and homemade. And we barely see that. So that tells you a lot about where our food is—or isn’t—coming from.

   But can you really blame us? This generation hasn’t been taught to ask where our food comes from. We’ve just been taught how to rip the plastic cover off the candy wrapper with our teeth and what burger tastes best from the dollar menu at Burger King.

   I don’t think it’s just our fault that our generation is ignorant to knowing where our food is grown. We are a generation of drive-thru dinners. Eating fast food, nuking frozen dinners, and having pizza delivered to our doorsteps has been deemed normal. It’s cheaper than whole foods. And I think we’ve trained ourselves to think that this food tastes better.

   I think we all need to go through the long, excruciating process of retraining our brains and bodies to know the difference between real food and chemically processed foods. Eating a clean diet isn’t easy. But once we realize that our bodies weren’t meant to digest and use processed foods as fuel, we’ll begin to want to know exactly where our food is coming from, how it’s grown, how it’s processed, and if it’s even real food.

   I think retraining the way we think about the food we eat would be a lot easier if there were more outlets for whole foods in Tuscaloosa. People in our community are becoming more aware of the River Market and the Homegrown Farmer’s Market recently. They’re only open on Saturday and Tuesday mornings, and on Thursday afternoon, and I can never seem to find a specific opening in my schedule to make it once a week.
   We have Manna Grocery, which has more processed whole foods than fruits, vegetables and meats, and it’s pretty expensive.
   We also have Epiphany Cafe, which is unbelievably delicious, but it’s also way out of a typical college student’s price range.

   I think if we have a more stable outlet to purchase fresh, homegrown and local foods, the more aware we’ll become of where our food comes from and what we’re feeding ourselves.
4. DWS Jean Mills says:

   November 6, 2012 at 3:49 AM

   I find that the more I know about how the food that is available at our stores comes about, the more dedicated I am to knowing how the food I eat comes about. For years I was just concerned about the health risks associated with possible contaminants on/in the food (pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, bacteria, etc), and the environmental impacts of the production and distribution of that food. But now I know that what I eat is political. By this I mean two things: 1) there are powerful corporate interests that determine what food is available to me, due to their influence on the politicians that set this nation’s Farm Bill every 5 years. This seems fundamentally wrong to me, and dangerous. I don’t want to accept or support this system.
   2) what we buy really is a vote and that vote matters. All I have to do is just look back to what organic foods were available in our local groceries as recently as 5 years ago and compare that to today. I’m not saying it’s great, but clearly the message has been received that there are a whole bunch of people out here that want something better and, as a result, more and more foods that are free of antibiotics, that are free of high fructose corn syrup, that are less processed, etc. are becoming available in our stores. (Power to the people!)
   We also have more options for purchasing directly from farmers now.
   Of course I think it’s critical to know the growers of our food and their practices. The Snowsbend CSA is continuing to grow and now there are 3 farmers markets in Tuscaloosa with more and more new vendors participating in those markets. Again, we don’t have the grandest markets in the world, but those of us that have been around a while can attest that this is significant improvement from just a few short years ago. Surely this change will continue as long as we “vote” for this with our food dollars. (hmmmm, perhaps I have tomorrow’s election on my mind!)
5. DWS Margaret Ann Toohey says:

   November 6, 2012 at 2:45 PM

   I am excited to be a part of this discussion. As one of the owner’s of
   Snow’s Bend Farm here in Tuscaloosa, I pretty much know where most of the food I eat comes from and have played a role in it’s production. What we don’t raise ourselves, we can usually source from a farmer we know in the state. When David and I were interns on a farm in Washington we became addicted to fresh flavors and food that we knew was healthy and not laden with pesticides, insecticides, or grown in sythentic fertilizer. I think the most important change we made was to cook! This is how you are really able to eat well. It becomes a way of life and we truly enjoy preparing meals and sharing them with friends and family, as well as talking about recipes. And I agree with Jean, the farmer’s markets have come a long way since we began farming 9 years ago. Markets are where you get inspiration and ingredients to take home. The more people shop at markets, the more farmers will sell at them, the more variety there will be to choose from, and on and on. Our Community Supported Agriculture program is how we are able to make our living farming, but markets are a good place for a burgeoning cook to begin.

   I am making myself hungry…..
6. DWS Jean Mills says:

   November 6, 2012 at 8:17 PM

   Yep, Margaret Ann is right – actually cooking with fresh foods gets you hooked. It does take more time, but at some point you figure out it’s such a good investment of time because it tastes so much better. It simply makes eating so much more satisfying. Eating is about the taste, not about getting rid of a hungry feeling. I admit my partner does most of the cooking in this household, so it is easier for me to say that it’s a good investment of time! But still, once you get used to that rhythm of cooking being a part of your daily life, it just fits in like any other daily activity (taking a shower?).

   I notice Caroline says she can’t get to the markets when they are open. I have another confession — we have a secret shopper. We live several miles from town and are simply not willing to get up early enough on Saturday morning to make it to the Tuscaloosa market before my favorite egg supplier sells out. So a friend who goes to the market first thing always gets eggs for us, and other things he sees that he thinks we don’t have in our garden. We then hook up later in the day (or week) for the hand off. I don’t know how we got so lucky, but we’ve had this arrangement for years. Perhaps something like that could work for you?
   Joining a CSA may also be a good option. When we ran our CSA years ago, some people joined simply because it meant food was being delivered to their door. They didn’t have to get to a market at a certain time and they didn’t have to decide what at the store would be okay to eat. We just sent them what was ready to harvest and they then had the fun/challenge of cooking it, confident that it was healthy food. I think for some it was a way to discipline themselves – they paid for that food and it was going to come to them, no matter what, so they were “forced” to make time to eat it or waste food and money.
7. DWS Mitch Royse says:

   November 7, 2012 at 8:31 PM

   Actually, this is a big part of why I wanted to participate. I want to learn more about what constitutes a sustainable and healthy approach to agriculture. I will admit I know very little about the issues in this area and I am very interested in adopting a more healthy lifestyle. I look forward to meeting everyone and learning more! -Mitch
8. DWS Lindsay Turner says:

   November 8, 2012 at 11:06 PM

   Caroline brings up several good points about the difficulty with our current food system and how, even if you are interested in shopping locally, it can be hard.

   We use the word “access” to address the three main ideas you touched on: supply/demand, geographical and financial. These issues are all intertwined – if there’s no demand or supply, there’s no fresh food. If I want fresh food but don’t have transportation to get to it, I have no fresh food. If I have transportation, there’s a market nearby and I want to get to it… but I don’t have the money, I don’t get any fresh food. We typically call this problem “food insecurity” – if you live in an area that is both low-income and has limited or no access to fresh, affordable food, you are deemed by the USDA as living in a food desert and are food insecure.

   The majority of people’s bodies have become so used to a constant influx of high-fat and high-sugary foods that, as Caroline says, it is hard to break that cycle. That being said, there’s hope! What we do at the Druid City Garden Project is focus on early intervention. At University Place Elementary, many of our students hit all three of the above access problems: lack of demand, geographic supply and financial restrictions. We have a school garden where, twice a week, students have science and math lessons using the garden as a hands-on teaching tool. At the end of every lesson, once the produce comes into season, we make sure the kids taste something they have grown. Then, during the Friday pick-up line, the students in our Budding Entrepreneurs program sell the produce they have helped grow back to their community at a subsidized rate. This allows an opportunity for food insecure persons to buy affordable fresh foods for their family. It also introduces the kids to new vegetables and, because they have had a personal stake in growing the food, gives them a much more favorable view towards it. I can’t tell you how amazing it is to hear 20 fifth grade students say, in unison, that kohlrabi is their favorite vegetable!

   So, yes, for those of us who are not food insecure, it does take a little more work in Tuscaloosa to find local foods. That being said, it is so worth it! Not only for the taste and quality of the goods which have been grown to peak ripeness and harvested within the past few days (rather than picked green, gassed and shipped across the country) but because, with every meal, you are voting with your dollar for a system that is built on sustainability, health and community.
9. DWS Nilam Dave says:

   November 9, 2012 at 6:17 PM

   Hi all,
   I’d like to add to the discussion. In regards to Michael Pollan’s quote I think people will begin to put more thought into food production when they are responsible for paying for the true cost of food production. I think the definition and idea of food culture has shifted and grown within the past 5 years. It seems to me that Tuscaloosa is just reaching the tipping point of jumping into a dynamic food culture. In general, participating requires individual motivation, or at least choosing to participate. I think growing a food culture requires making the locally grown foods the easiest to select and purchase. In my opinion, one of the key limiting factors to the local food culture is the perceived costs and benefits. Many of us have an “idea” of how much we want to pay for food, and we are not directly able to assess the direct and indirect costs of food production. Part of why food is cheap, is really set out in food commodities and food politics – and our expectations. Most food that people buy is processed either in the form of processed food in the grocery store, or processed food at fast food outlets. It is generally an individual choice to select the healthiest, most sustainable, most green, etc, choice. Many foods rely on commodity foods in which the true cost of production has been subsidized by government, industry, or both. This is often the most convenient choice for people, and it requires the least amount of thought. In shopping at grocery stores, we don’t have to think about the true cost of food, the way we might if buying from a local producer or farmer. We might see that the locally grown foods are more expensive, but we cannot really understand why without understanding things like nutrition, food legislation, community food security, and sustainable agriculture.
10. DWS Julia Whitten says:

    November 10, 2012 at 2:52 PM

    I love the discussion so far. I don’t always know where my food comes from here in Tuscaloosa because I get most of my produce from Publix, but I do frequent the Homegrown Alabama market, so I know a portion of the food I buy is grown locally. Nowadays, I believe there is a spectrum of thoughts on food identification: some people simply don’t care where their food comes from and how it was made, others are on the fence—they’d rather have the information handed to them to dig up the answers themselves, and others still are demanding adequate food labeling (origin, GMO’s, etc.) Furthermore, we need to inspire and educate people to yearn for answers and engage themselves in their own role sustaining the planet and their bodies. I don’t think there is a formula for achieving this goal, but Tuscaloosa’s sustainable ag movement is certainly growing.
    Additionally, in reply to Lindsay Turner’s post, food education in elementary schools is one of the best ways to plant a seed (no pun intended) of informed eating in the next generation. I love what the Druid City Garden Project is doing and I believe that anytime people are involved in growing their own food, they are more likely to get inspired to become healthier and more informed about where their food comes from and sustainable food in general.
    I also want to hit on what Jean Mills said earlier about voting with food dollars. I love this idea of voting with our forks. Michael Pollan adds, “The wonderful thing about food is you get three votes a day.”
11. DWS Jean Mills says:

    November 11, 2012 at 2:43 PM

    Yes, well… about that voting. Prop 37 in CA, which would require the labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in foods, was defeated this week. 90% of those surveyed say they want to know if the foods they are eating contain GMOs, and the assumption was that Prop 37 would pass. But just a few days before the election, corporate interest started a huge media blitz, and, for whatever reason, voters were persuaded. So how’s this for corporate control over our food? Take a look at the corps that contributed to the $45+million media blitz to defeat Prop 37 and ask yourself what the heck they are hiding:
    (from BeforeItsNews.com):

    MONSANTO COMPANY – $8,112,069
    E.I. DUPONT DE NEMOURS & CO. – $5,400,000
    PEPSICO, INC. – $2,145,400
    GROCERY MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION – $2,002,000
    BASF PLANT SCIENCE – $2,000,000
    BAYER CROPSCIENCE – $2,000,000
    DOW AGROSCIENCES LLC – $2,000,000
    SYNGENTA CORPORATION – $2,000,000
    KRAFT FOODS GLOBAL, INC. – $1,950,500
    NESTLE USA, INC. – $1,461,600
    COCA-COLA NORTH AMERICA – $1,455,500
    GENERAL MILLS, INC. – $1,230,300
    CONAGRA FOODS – $1,176,700
    KELLOGG COMPANY – $790,700
    SMITHFIELD FOODS, INC. – $683,900
    DEL MONTE FOODS COMPANY – $674,100
    CAMPBELL SOUP COMPANY – $598,000
12. DWS Brandi McKinney says:

    November 11, 2012 at 3:34 PM

    Wow, Jean. What are they hiding, indeed? Since so many smaller companies fall under the umbrellas of these behemoths of the food industry, are there any companies left who didn’t participate in the defeat of Prop 27?

    Like Lindsay, I’m a big fan of early intervention to establish healthy habits and awareness of issues. I have a fifteen-month old son and we are vegetarian. My husband and I have already discussed how we will communicate to him the reasons for this decision, but fortunately that’s still a little while away! In the meantime, he’s the one of the few children we know who regularly eats quinoa, kasha, avocados, kale, and tofu instead of tater tots and chicken nuggets. We focus on variety and certainly don’t limit ourselves to “American” food, but it is difficult as a working mom to source each item we put into our mouths. We get kale locally, but quinoa is definitely another story!

    I know, though, that there are many folks who are not only “food insecure” but actually going hungry… and if you are truly hungry, do you care where your food comes from or how healthy it is? That’s a problem everywhere, but people may be surprised to know how much hunger affects Tuscaloosa County residents. I work for Alabama Credit Union and we sponsor the “Secret Meals for Hungry Children” program, which supplies food to children who have been identified as being hungry over the weekend.

    I think that this blog and dinner discussion is a step in the right direction. While many of the people on this blog have participated in a (public or private) dialog about where their food comes from, many have not… and since there is strength in numbers, having a larger forum for this discussion is crucial to raising awareness so that twenty years from now, we may have clear means of knowing if that apple came from Tuscaloosa or Washington State! Tackling hunger issues and sourcing issues go hand-in-hand.
    • DWS Jean Mills says:

      November 12, 2012 at 5:05 PM

      I think Brandi is right to point out that the food issue is different for those without many resources. I’ve heard people refer to the kinds of conversations we’re having as “elitist” because we have the luxury of being concerned about the quality of our food and being able to buy foods that cost more. I choose to think of it as “a responsiblity”. Those who can have to get out and make change happen, and not just for a few. Our demanding a supply if fresh, local, healthy food, helps make it happen for a wider group of people (btw, I think of environmental issues the same way). But this is just a start. The Druid City Garden Project that Lindsey talked about is one another way of helping make change that benefits not just those with money. Working for a fair and just Farm Bill (with such programs as SNAP that allows food stamps to be spent at farmers markets)is another. Working to create food hubs that can aggregate locally produced foods so that it is more feasible for institutions (schools, hospitals, etc) and stores to source fresh foods is a way to benefit the whole community too. It can’t all be about just some of us getting to eat healthy food.
      But I don’t know what to do about the convenience factor. When we produced vegetables commercially, we would occasionally have surplus produce. We were told by the folks that ran a local “soup kitchen” at the time that they couldn’t take our greens because it took too much storage space and prep time. I completely get that canned goods are more efficiently stored and prepared. So who am I to insist that they make use of free produce? In the meantime, I know kale and collards are the most nutritous of all vegetables. But canned greens? ugh.
13. DWS Emily Conner says:

    November 12, 2012 at 11:27 PM

    Yes, Jean: ugh. Canned greens! Today I noticed the displays of canned turnip greens at the grocery store–just in time for turnip season! And the cans of pumpkin pulp are ready for our fall pies, right when winter squash and sweet potatoes are at their best. We can say we eat seasonally, but that seems to require a sentimental approach to the word “seasonal,” and so many people have no idea what’s being grown in their very own local farms. I love Lindsay’s story about the twenty 5th graders cheering for kohlrabi–I imagine it must have something to do with what a beautiful (and weird!) vegetable it is, its strange shape and purply shine. Just to take a look at vegetables, freed from plastic blister packs, or better yet, in the garden dirt at one of DCGP’s school gardens, has the potential to change a person.

    Ok, I know that’s extreme, and I know watching vegetables grow might not affect everyone the way it does me, but I do think the experience of seeing food in its most raw state has the potential to inspire, to open one’s eyes to variety and life in food…and to offer a comparison with the processed and packaged things we so often eat. There’s something about the aesthetics of a cabbage head, the (real) dew on broccoli florets, the smell of a tomato vine that makes me appreciate food so much. My partner and I co-teach organic farming in New College, and though our goals are many, one of my main objectives is to get students excited about and invested in vegetables–to get their hands dirty and their mouths full of sugar snap peas right off the vine. And then, of course, to show them how they can do it on their own, or how they might be able to join other organizations or farms or communities based around growing and appreciating real food. I know it’s not terribly practical, but so much of my thinking about how to change our relationships to food is thinking about how to get people to care on an individual level. As Jean noted, it was apparently not that difficult to get people to not care about GMO labeling in CA (a shock I can’t quite get over). But how do we get more momentum behind the love and value and demand of real/whole/local food? We’ve come a long way, but there’s a long way to go.
14. DWS Andy Grace says:

    November 13, 2012 at 12:50 AM

    I hate to jump into this conversation so late, with so many interesting points to address. So I’ll just jump back to the first prompt given in the Michael Pollan quote. It’s certainly thought provoking – spending more time finding a mechanic than finding a farmer. But if we unpack the quote a little it’s a bit of “apples vs. oranges.” A mechanic or a contractor is most likely someone you’re actually going to directly interact with – someone who is probably from your city, someone whose accountability you need to take into consideration, someone you will see face to face and need to trust. On the other hand, the food we eat has become simply one more consumer good to be purchased in the open market. This is quite a logical result of advanced capitalism. The profits of the corporations who provide most of the material goods in our lives (socks, tomatoes, iPhones) have a vested interest in separating us from the processes behind our goods. And it’s what we want, too. We don’t want to have to spin our own cloth, to have to build our own cars, etc. If we have money, we can use the stunning efficiencies of the global economy to consume whatever we need, nearly whenever we want, blissfully ignorant of how it came to be. Capitalism is about efficiencies of scale and the grocery store is one of the most amazing marvels of that system. To imagine such a place even 60 or 70 years ago – nearly everything you could want, available at any time of year, shipped constantly from hundreds or thousands of miles. It’s really an incredible feat of modern life. 

    So why would we want to dismantle a system that has eliminated famine, that has liberated most folks from toiling in the fields for a pittance of wages and that, in one way or another, created the luxuries and leisure time we’ve come to associate with that hallmark of American aspiration: The Middle Class Lifestyle? I’ve been wrestling with some version of this question ever since I started thinking critically about the food I eat. And this is what I’ve come to: I think it’s important for us to change the system (not eliminate it) because I think we’ve gone too far. The efficiencies that created the modern industrial food system have had innumerable costs for individuals, for communities, for the environment. And for a long time those costs were mostly hidden. But now we’re beginning to see those costs in our own backyards. And that’s why we’ve got to make a change. 

    So now my question. How do we change it?
15. DWS Ally Martin says:

    November 18, 2012 at 11:23 PM

    Wow! What an amazing discussion so far. I am really looking forward to dinner.

    At first, I approached this program thinking that I wanted to learn more about the food enterprise in this country and how I can influence positive change in the community. This aspiration was based solely upon the perverse assumption that I currently live outside of the food process in my community. I thought that I was an independent actor, influenced only by my cravings, if you will, when it comes to when and where I choose to dine.

    However, after reading these comments and discussing some of you all’s opinions with others in my friend group, I have learned that every part of who I am and what I like is both a product of and inspiration for the power elite within the food enterprise. Everything from my education level, gender, marital status, regional/geographical location, race, and age all shape what food/food products I consume.

    This exercise has taught me to treat food and the experience of food just like any other capitalistic commodity, with a healthy dose of skepticism for every party involved. I hope to learn ways that I can potentially combat the negative influence of those who do not perpetuate my well-being and the well-being of my community in their involvement in this process. Hopefully, I also get to enjoy the foods that I love!

    –Ally